


A Deeper Cut

by raven_aorla



Series: Sheaths and Safeties [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Angst and Humor, BDSM, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enthusiastic Consent, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Funeral, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Minor Character Death, Missing Scene, Multi, Polyamory, Season 1, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Weird Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-14
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-17 06:37:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12359676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: Butch Gilzean's killed a Zsaszette. Victor Zsasz & Company grieve.[Can be read on its own.]





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific BDSM tags, none of which are graphic: bondage, whipping, knife play, implied ice play, gags, sex crying, orgasm delay, and aftercare.
> 
> I suppose the aftercare is rather graphic. Hardcore nurturing.

Zsasz knows to call his Zsaszettes “women” or “ladies” unless he is being playful. Jane is the most insistent on that. Well, was.

Anyway, when he asks what they think, whether they should kill Butch Gilzean or take him home to play with - he’s playful, he has to be playful. He’d allowed Butch and Penguin a few seconds of seeing Victor Zsasz Not Being Okay, and that’s all they’re gonna get.

He’s also being rhetorical. Falcone ordered that if they can take Butch alive, they should, destined for one of Zsasz’s time-consuming but comprehensive _basement specials._ Zsasz’s family helps here and there, but he’s the only one who understands it. Even if there hadn’t been that order, he knows Yoona, Leonara, and the rest would agree that pain is in order.

There’s a rewarding look of fear on Butch’s face as a pair of fierce women who now have a serious grudge against him produce zip ties and a pair of bandanas from various strategic crannies in their dressed-to-impress outfits. Yoona in particular is a wonder with minimalist bondage. (And elaborate. And predicament. And even comfy, if someone she likes asks nicely.) They are cool and professional about it, though. 

Zsasz has a call to make, and steps away to make it.

“Don Falcone? Qualified success. Mooney got out of the building. One of my crew we left stationed outside is on her tail. We’ve got Gilzean and will proceed as instructed. Cobblepot is fine. No serious damage to the club.” 

Falcone sighs on the other end of the line. “I know your best is the best anyone could do. I want to hear regular updates.”

“We’re all gonna need the next three days completely off, no calls, total blackout and inaccessibility. Except for this project, of course.” Falcone doesn’t have work for him every day, and the others do side jobs to varying degrees since Zsasz works solo a fair amount. There are “vacations” when Falcone has no _plans_ to bring him in for a few consecutive days and says so in advance. However, he and at least one (usually two) of the others are theoretically at Falcone’s bidding 24/7.

“You don't even have Mooney in hand yet, and you want three days off for your entire team?”

Zsasz clears his throat. And he is Okay. Victor Zsasz is Always Okay. "Lost one of ours, sir. One of mine."

Falcone’s tone softens. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know you have a strong bond with each other. Granted.”

This is an extremely rare concession on Falcone’s part. It can pay to be an extremely rare kind of employee, and one who has only outright lost one before. Another one had a career-ending injury and now does top-notch specialized weapon mods and repairs in a little shop in the Narrows. 

Jane’s lying where they left her. Penguin’s sitting on the floor and watching over her, a bit dazed. 

“You didn’t look happy,” Penguin murmurs. “Thought I’d...it seemed wrong to just run.”

Maybe the guy’s trying to curry favor. Zsasz grunts in a vaguely appreciative manner all the same. “Open the side door for me on the way out.”

“You got it.”

Jane looks surprised. She’s still warm. Zsasz closes her eyes for her. He picks her up with the same care as he would a sleeping child.

****

Yoona’s riding shotgun, making necessary texts and calls. Candy’s in pursuit; Mooney’s got enough of a head start that adding anyone else to the chase would be pointless. Zsasz is driving. Butch is stuffed in the trunk, sedated with a dose Doc mixed up specifically for his weight and basic medical history, injected after he stumbled blindly to the car on his own guided power. Leonara is holding Jane in back, positioned where Jane won’t be glimpsed through a window even if the tint fails them. She’s straight, and Jane is - was - monogamous with a Blackgate inmate who’s got eight years to go. But they were closer to each other than any other two people in the house, except Yoona and Doc.

There’s no sound from the backseat, but Zsasz sees in the rearview mirror that Leonara is shaking with silent tears. He doesn’t look again. 

Everyone except Candy is outside the house to meet them when they get there, including Teeth and Jesús even though they aren’t part of the inner circle. They volunteer to get Butch down to the sub-basement. Good. Zsasz doesn’t want to touch him until he’s sure he’ll be able to do so in a controlled, constructive manner. Those two aren’t allowed to see the process, but it’s alright for them to help with this basic part.

Doc is steady, as one would expect for someone with her resume, though her coiled braid of thick black hair has been pinned crookedly for once. She says, businesslike, “Let’s get her into the medbay.”

Zsasz laughs louder than he intended. “What, so you can try to _fix_ her? She’s dead! Praying to your over-the-top war goddess nicknamesake isn’t gonna be worth anything either.” 

Yoona swirls around and fists both hands in his jacket. “Don’t talk to Kali like that.”

“This is my house - “

“Our house. We’re off the clock. You’re not the boss here.” She searches his face. “You don’t have to try to act like you’re fine here, either.”

“Nefyn can help us look after Jane,” Doc says gently. She’s the only one who consistently calls the apprentices by their real names rather than the standard nickname. (Admittedly, this puppy’s full real name sounds made up as hell.) 

The puppy nods. He looks serious, but he’s not been with them very long and never got that close to Jane. Not like he is with his mom figure Kali, his euphemistic Daddy Zsasz, and his _omg bff lmao_ Candy. “Maybe you could go clear your head, Mr. Zsasz?”

Yoona looks for Zsasz’s tight nod before hauling him inside. “I’ll be back in an hour or so, baby,” she tells Doc over her shoulder. 

****

She’s already dressed for the part, so all Yoona does is tell Zsasz to set aside his stained jacket for the puppy to clean, go to his own room, take off his shoes, socks, and everything above the waist, and wait. She freshens up in the master bathroom first, for her own sense of poise.

He’d installed a hook in the ceiling soon after acquiring the property. Her attaching him to it isn’t to keep him in place, it’s to give him something to hold onto, to give him a grounding feeling of leather around his wrists.

She’s checked for circulation and is rummaging around in the supply chest when she prompts, “What are your limits?”

“Nothing unusual.” He considers this. “I mean, for me.”

“What’s your safeword?”

“Harvey Bullock.” Especially now that the considerably more intriguing (and okay, kinda sexy) Jim Gordon is by his side for contrast.

“Unless I ask you a question or there’s an emergency, what else do you get to say?”

“Nothing.” It’s a fair trade for how things work between him and his backup in the field, in order to keep things running smoothly.

He knows people who know about the tally marks often think he gets off on pain. He doesn’t. He gets high. It takes a lot, though. He and Yoona aren’t romantically into each other, but they’re the only match for each other when it comes to his masochistic side and her sadism. She plays with others, but two of her whips are just for him. They’re too much for the rest.

She has him lie facedown on the bed after, for wiping up blood and antiseptic application. Not as good as cuts, but those have to be earned, and he does feel light headed in a good way after the scene.

“Sit, let me look at your face,” she says when she’s done. “You can talk now.”

There’s a welcome ache when he moves. Since none of them are going on missions for three days, she’d had scope to really go for it and not worry about it impacting his performance. “How are you? Did that help?” 

She’s sweaty, which is common, and red in the face, which is not. “Somewhat, thank you. Tell Kali that I’m going to have a bubble bath and if she wants me to eat anything before, like, noon tomorrow someone can bring it up.”

“Got it. I’ll be having what I guess will be a stinging shower, thanks to you…”

“Vic, wait, hold still.” Yoona wipes at his eyes with a fresh tissue. The ones from their aftercare are in a tidy heap in a wastebasket.

“You get stuff in your eyes when you medically can’t grow eyelashes,” Zsasz reminds her quietly.

All she does is kiss him, something she rarely does with anyone but her girlfriend.

****

“Hello, Butch! I hope my crew have made you uncomfortable down here. I’m seriously beat and this sort of thing is carefully paced, not to be rushed, so I’mma leave you after administering your first course of drugs. If it makes you feel better, no matter how you want to die during your stay, you’ll only remember a nightmarish haze later on. Probably. Enjoy the interesting sights and sounds of the next few hours.”

****

The puppy is sitting alone in the kitchen, pretending to do homework for the community college class on introductory criminal law Zsasz let him sign up for and that he attends twice a week. In reality he is doodling spaceships and zeppelins in his notebook, while listening to mopey music about someone named Eli who doesn’t have a great sales pitch because he keeps complaining about his dead girlfriend.

“Where’s everyone else?” Zsasz asks, pouring himself a glass of the guava nectar Jesús hoards like a guava-specific butterfly.

The puppy is second only to Kali in ability to keep track of the rest. Standard puppy duty. “Teeth’s squeezing in a job he was planning on doing tomorrow so he can be around to help with funeral stuff. Yoona and Dr. Kali are in their room. Jane’s in our one, uh, like, morgue drawer, Dr. Kali confirmed death and cleaned her up enough to just chill for now. Jesús is supervising Leonara’s drinking in the upstairs rec room so she doesn’t overdo it. I think they might be watching vintage PBS, like Bill Nye the Science Guy or something. I’m waiting for Candy. Home in a few minutes. She said you didn’t pick up, which I figure was ‘cause you were underground.”

Puppies aren’t allowed in that room anyway, and this one sees torture as a grim chore only to be undertaken if someone demands it from him. That’s okay. He’s the only one of them who can throw knives well enough for it to be a viable standard fight technique rather than a flashy garnish. Lots of people have niches.

Zsasz perches on the counter - he’s wearing freshly laundered home pants so it’s acceptable to Leonara, the fussiest when it comes to hygiene - and sips his drink. Usually he’s hungry after a job. Not tonight. It isn’t long before Candy gets home. The puppy runs to greet her. Zsasz follows more slowly.

Her blonde hair is a mess and she’s sweaty and panting, gray eyes bloodshot. Her motorcycle helmet is clutched to her chest like a shield. “Victor, she used a buncha street kids crossing the road for cover ‘cause she knows we try hard not to kill kids and she eventually got out of her car and ran down somewhere so small I had to follow on foot, and I didn’t know that street, I’d never been and I ran, I really did, Victor I ran but I lost her, I couldn’t find her and I legit threatened to shank a homeless guy if he didn’t tell me where she went but it turned out he was blind anyways so I gave him twenty bucks because I felt like an asshole, I’ve looked for hours and hours…”

“Candy,” Zsasz says evenly.

“Jesus fucking Emmanuel H. Christ, I lost her and I’m so sorry, _Jane’s dead and I couldn’t get my one fucking job right!”_ The helmet drops to the floor and Candy is weeping, nearly sobbing but not quite, with her face in her hands. She shakes off the puppy’s attempt to touch her. “Don’t give me to Falcone for bargaining, or, or back to Sal for traitor treatment, please, just, just let me go to the funeral and shoot me quick and clean after, like you were gonna when I worked for, for, for, you know, before you changed your mind and hired me instead. _Please._ ”

She squeaks when Zsasz wraps her in a hug. They aren’t sexual partners but they’ve hugged a handful of times before. “You’re staying with us, Candace Maroni. I was too confident and didn’t consider that either of them would make it out of there. I shouldn’t have given tailing duties to the one member of this family who’s lived in Gotham for less than five years. Mooney knows those streets like an overplayed pop song.”

“You’re not mad?” She sounds so startled that it makes Zsasz wonder how her dad’s cousin treated her for fuckups that weren’t really her fault.

“Not at you.” Zsasz pats her back. “Let puppy get you settled. He said Leo’s getting smashed in the TV room with Jesús monitoring her.”

“Thank you so much.” Candy clings for three more seconds before stepping away.

No Zsaszette is currently one-on-one partners with the puppy, but they get casually handsy with him and sometimes have nights where they pass him around (and annoyingly never invite Zsasz). This time the puppy kisses Candy’s cheek and accompanies her to wherever. Candy is no less stereotypically masculine than the puppy is in build, but at the moment she looks remarkably like an exhausted sorority girl leaving a party that went south fast.

****

The phone call to relay Mooney’s disappearance to Falcone is not fun. After the scolding ends, Zsasz chooses a pay dock for this mission rather than reveal which of his people ultimately lost the scent. 

He’s not ready to sleep after that, though the clock and upcoming duties say he needs to. He lies awake for awhile in his overly large bed. After seriously considering whether a random murder would be an unacceptable cheat of the tally system, he gets up to prowl through the house instead. Instead of actually going to see Butch, he uncovers and checks the monitor he keeps in his room that gets the feed from a security camera pointed at the prisoner. Butch is hooked up to a machine that’ll sound an alarm heard throughout the house if his heart rate spikes or stops, but better safe than even more pissed off.

Then he pokes his head into the TV room. Leonara and Candy are tangled asleep on the couch. Leonara only sleeps with men and isn’t big on cuddling them. Yet very occasionally, she’ll snuggle with a gal pal, and apparently being drunk allows her to nod off that way too. Given Candy’s various sources of angst, it’s probably good for her. Looks like Jesús turned the TV and lights off and put a few blankets on them. 

He makes his way to the puppy’s “Harry Potter bedroom”, as the kid jokingly calls it, in the downstairs hall. It really is kinda under the stairs. There’s light peeking from underneath the door so Zsasz knocks.

“Enter,” the puppy says. Zsasz finds him lying awake on his new twin-size mattress on the floor. Leonara recently upgraded to something fancy and handed this down to him. It takes up most of the space, though he’s got also a little bookcase and set of drawers and hangs non-folded clothes from an exposed pipe. He says it’s more square footage than he got to himself in juvie and infinitely more privacy.

“You reading?”

“Not really.” He lets the paperback fall from his fingers. “Want something, Mr. Zsasz?”

“I’d really like to take you upstairs and wreck you, but before you answer, let me be clear on what I mean by that.” 

“Okay.” He sits up.

Zsasz elaborates slowly and deliberately. First, because he would never violate the trust his partners have in him. Second, because he’s talking to a nineteen-year-old who got busted five years ago chucking his attempted rapist’s severed dick down a manhole while hysterically yelling, “IT’S A FUCKING PUN!” 

“You may think I mean what I usually do to you. No. Yoona didn’t get more than half of the monster out of me, maybe only a third. We’ve all got the next three days off from active duty, which for you will include everything but basic daily chores. You will need those days to recover. I’m gonna listen to you calling red or snapping your fingers, but I’m not going to check in as much as I usually do. You’ll have to be really assertive if I go too far.”

“Oh no, I’m such a pushover, woe is I,” the puppy says, deadpan.

Zsasz doesn’t smile. “Nothing’ll show where your funeral suit won’t cover. No scars, no wax, no burning, like always. But I’m asking for harsher than I’ve ever done. You are going to cry if you do this. There will be no negative consequences for you if you turn me down.”

“Dr. Kali said she’d prefer if I didn’t agree to sex with you at all for a few days, out of concern for my health, but if I do, she made me promise not to agree to breathplay.” The puppy’s the only person who’s ever agreed to have Zsasz’s hands around his throat or pressed over his mouth and nose, green eyes wide but bright. It’s a gift Zsasz doesn’t take lightly. 

For a split second Zsasz is irked at the patronizing implications, but Doc’s cared for Untouchables in India, wounded soldiers on battlefields, broken vets and former POWs in crappy hospitals where the military discarded them, and the bottom of Gotham’s barrel after her faith in law and society snapped. Doc knows desperate. 

“Fair enough,” Zsasz says. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Well, you’re too banged-up to carry me, so do you want me to walk or to crawl?”

Zsasz ruffles his brown hair fondly, a last moment of sweetness unless he safewords. “As you wish. You get ten minutes to do whatever washing up or hydrating or prep you’re gonna get. I won’t be pausing for your comfort. I’ll meet you there. I need to fetch a bowl of ice and some tongs.”

The puppy looks up, faltering. “Are you gonna kick me out after?”

“No, I’ll take care of you then. I’ll put you back together. Always.” 

His smile is nervous but flirty. “Then I volunteer as tribute.”

****

It’s a reverse of common rituals that the puppy only use Victor’s first name in the bedroom, though this will change after Nefyn P. Pontiac (which sounds SO made up, right?) graduates and becomes a real assassin worthy of real names.

_“Victor, Victor, it’s really tight, oh god…”_

It’s not _red_ , or even _no_ , so Zsasz just gives the clamp another twist. “Shh. I like hearing you, but let’s not wake anyone else, mmkay?” 

Zsasz holds off on gags for the first forty minutes, not counting when his subject’s mouth is busy. Though this is a singularly self-absorbed scene, he remembers not to slice shallow cuts anywhere he can see the puppy’s guardians stubbed out cigarettes on him as a kid. Leonara and Jesús had adults who physically hurt them badly for years as kids, too. Candy's just hurt her soul.

At the end it’s like everything twisted and grieving in Zsasz has gone into a much less dangerous vessel, who is quivering and sniffling as Zsasz finishes. He takes up Zsasz’s offer to let him come after over an hour of denial, and after he does it’s like cutting his strings. He’s floppy and pliant while Zsasz wipes him clean and barely lifts his head enough for a drink of water when provided. Zsasz gets him into a super soft shirt and yoga pants specifically for these times. He checks to make sure there’s nothing that needs special tending other than emotional fragility. Zsasz feels almost back to baseline now that his worry doll’s soaked up his distress. With that comes responsibility.

“You were so damn good for me, Nefynfynfynynwyn,” Zsasz tells him when he spoons him and reaches to turn out the light. He exaggerates the praise, knowing how much the kid thrives on it. The emotion is sincere. “You were very brave. Stuff I did to you has made big burly men twice your age - and literal, though not metaphorical, larger volume of balls - scream or pass out. All you did was get a tiny bit watery-eyed and, oh, pop a boner, which is not the worst thing to do during an interrogation if you want to confuse and agitate ‘em.”

The puppy giggles faintly. Good, Zsasz didn’t overdo it psychologically, even if he’s bruised, bitten, cut, or already scarred except for neck, head, and hands. “What do you do if that happens?”

“You mean I'm workin’ on ‘em?” This is the time to say the silliest thing possible. “Worms. I fetch worms. And a funnel. Not a lot of people have a kink for that.”

“Liar.” The puppy giggles again, fainter, and goes pillbug.

“Maybe.” Zsasz zooms in and confirms he’s swaddled cozily. Zsasz is sure to kiss every bit of his available neck, head, and hands, and pets his hair and murmurs playful things for a long time. Jane is below them, cold and still. But for now Zsasz listens for the tell-tale slow rise and fall of what he still has beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nefyn is listening to "Eli the Barrow Boy" by The Decemberists.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why you all keep having backstory Zsasz crew

Doc and Yoona call everyone to the dining room at noon for a brunch meeting. Zsasz is two minutes late on account of gently helping the puppy shower, who naked in the light of day looks like a well-employed voodoo doll. Just in case, Zsasz double-checks to see his ribs are whole, which they are. The puppy is still sleepy and sounds a bit hoarse (oops) but goes on in a reasonably lively way about something that happened when Harvey Dent stopped by to guest-lecture at the community college. He continues as they make their way to the meeting.

“...And then he gets all intense and vaguely homicidal when he asks the entire room who stole his wallet, like there’s this whole other really interesting half to him…”

Everyone’s eating at the dining table and Yoona is distributing handouts. The puppy tries to sit at his place, winces, and ends up standing. 

Doc glances at him and wordlessly beckons Zsasz to join her in a corner of the kitchen. “What did you do, Victor?”

“Nothing he didn’t agree to. He kept his promise to you, if you’re worried about that, and I’ve been coddling him since.” Zsasz takes advantage of fridge proximity to dig out some locally farmed whole milk in an old-fashioned glass bottle. Best kind. When he emerges, she’s standing there looking weary. He frowns and adds, less flippantly, “I wanted to hurt someone, and given my mood, the only way it wouldn’t cross my lines was if it was someone I care about.”

The lines in question: no killing/torturing children, bystanders who aren’t in the way or get out of it, people who’ve been promised conditional mercy and kept their end of the bargain, or (discounting unavoidable defense) for free. Not that Zsasz would feel any real guilt, but because he knows there’s an abyss waiting for him on the other side of the imposed railing. An abyss with no love, or maybe even humanity, at the bottom.

He pops the milk cap off and keeps eye contact with Doc as he chugs. She sighs and nods. “Remember how much I care about every single one of you, that’s all.” Then she pours a generous helping of chai from where it’s been keeping warm on the stove. The puppy’s favored coffee alternative.

“I saw to Butch,” Leonara says when Zsasz takes a seat next to her. She nudges a plate of pancakes towards him. She’s shown an interest in his basement specials so he’s made her his regular assistant. “You should initiate the next phase real soon, though.”

Zsasz puts his milk within reach and rests a hand on her thigh, feather-lightly at first until he’s sure it’s welcome. “Thanks, L. How are you?” 

“No hangover, anyway. Jesús is a good minder.” Jesús has a mouthful of fruit salad but he gives a thumbs-up. Leonara waves back. She leans against Zsasz, almost molding to his side, even as she handles knife and fork. She murmurs, “I could use you being sweet to me tonight for once. Puppy can be there.”

“I’m up for it, though if the puppy needs cozy one-on-one time…” Zsasz turns his head to see how the kid is reacting. 

Candy interjects, “Nuh uh, we’re having a bff sex-free sleepover in my room tonight, aren’t we?” She presents the puppy with a softer chair from the living room and helps him settle into it.

“Sounds good for everyone,” the puppy says before resuming brunch. He picks up his handout to read, prompting Zsasz to do the same.

One side is a list of stuff they need to do if they’re gonna have the funeral in about twenty-nine hours, and thus have a day to rest and collect themselves after. The other side is a copy of Jane’s will and funeral requests. All of the household have one on file.

Teeth, who tends to spend meals chowing not chatting, suddenly laughs. “Look at the Religious Rituals clause.”

Jane was an atheist. However, she’s asked for those of them who do have some of religious belief to do something within that tradition for her. 

Doc will wear white and give a meal to the needy on that day. Cremation is not in the cards. Yoona will read out a passage from the Korean translation of the Bible her devoutly Presbyterian grandfather gave her when she was little, one of her prized possessions even if she hasn’t been to church since his murder. 

Candy will go to confession beforehand and do her penance, to be as unsullied as possible for the event. She knows a very understanding mob-friendly - but not ahem, “child-friendly” - priest, though apparently she still exhausts him. She’s non-lethally dealt with a few of his enemies at no charge, in thanks. (When she goes to Mass once in awhile it’s still as Cesar, and Zsasz doesn’t know how that works out on balance but doesn’t ask.)

And Teeth has to wear a pasta strainer on his head.

“I don’t get it,” Candy says when she finds out why Teeth laughed.

“Have you heard of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?” he asks, blushing. Which is an interesting look on a strapping Captain America echo/Aryan archetype, depending on if he can hear you or not. Zsasz doesn’t know Titus “Teeth” Heath super well. Sure, both he and Jesús pay rent rather than pitching in except in emergencies, but Teeth only comes here to eat, sleep, reload, or clean up. Jesús has bonded a bit with the ladies and freely taught the puppy skills he’s unusually good at, like hotwiring cars under fire. Jesús didn’t tell the puppy until afterwards that he’d been using blanks during the final test.

“You can explain later,” Doc says super-maternally. She’s barely older than Zsasz, but she wears the attitude well. “We need to divvy up the tasks.”

“I can pick Amanita up from the train station tomorrow morning,” Yoona says. Amanita had been required to recruit her replacement before graduating, which was no easy task. Nefyn was her fifth candidate brought in for consideration. It wasn’t just about talent, but compatibility.

The puppy perks up. “Ooh, can I go too?”

Kali says, “I need you to accompany me tomorrow morning to give some street kids a free meal. After that child catching business not long ago they’ll be wary of strangers offering food, but a lot of them know and trust you.” The puppy hasn’t been homeless in a long time, but he checks on his old haunts on many of his days off, sees if the kids there now want defense lessons or big brother-ing or someone to stop harassing them. He’s not normally allowed to feed them, due to how quickly that could escalate.

“If we see Cat we could ask if she’s seen or heard anything about Mooney,” the puppy suggests. “She’ll probably be asleep in some hidey-hole at that hour, though.”

“Let’s not share the position we’re in, pup, though it’s good you shared your idea with us.” Zsasz can’t reach him, but makes sure to beam encouragement.

Jane wanted a few other guests besides Amanita. Those all live in Gotham. Ploy is the former Zsaszette who’s now in a wheelchair but thriving in her own way. Sisters Trixie and Natty are specialist “cop handlers” for hire, whether through bamboozling, bribing, threatening, blackmailing, or plain putting them down. Zsasz’s family have had a mutually beneficial relationship with them for ages, plus they make superb moonshine. Then there’s David, the mob lawyer who got Jane and Leonara out of what would have been twenty years at minimum, and it’s high time Candy and the puppy met him anyway. Amanita’s predecessor’s predecessor Whisper said zie might be able to attend but couldn’t promise. Amanita’s direct predecessor has been in a coma for two years from a car crash while in pursuit of a target. Jane’s boyfriend won’t be able to attend, but Doc will visit him with pictures of the funeral and a few keepsakes at first opportunity. On paper she’s got a clean record and can walk into Blackgate without suspicion.

Jane also requested that if she died successfully saving someone’s life, if it’s at all feasible she wants that person invited.

Everyone looks at Zsasz when they get to that part. Zsasz checks his watch. “Two hours downstairs, then I’m on it. You gonna be okay, Candy?” Only he and Doc (unless maybe the puppy too, come to think of it) know that Candy’s an attempted suicide survivor. Doc says this is common for the trans teen Candy was at the time, and that with support her risk is much lower. So Candy gets extra support when stuff sucks in her head. Q.E.D.

Candy looks confused again. Jesús scratches at his five-o’clock shadow and says, “I haven’t set foot in a church in about a decade, and haven’t believed in it longer, but the Pope’s been too busy to kick me out yet. I know how it works. Could go with.”

The confusion melts into gratitude. “Like not literally with me in there, but yes, thank you.”

Jesús acts shocked and pronounces the following sentence in a completely Anglicized manner. “You don’t want _Jesus_ with you? When _confessing your sins_? Mixed signals, woman!” 

That still hasn’t gotten old for anyone here.

****

“Hello again, Butch. Hope you liked my assistant’s visit. Wait, no, hope you didn’t. This cackling evil shtick has its own special lingo I’m working on.”

_“You’re...more shook up...than you pretend.”_

“Shush.”

_“Fish got away, didn’t she? That’s gotta be stickin’ in your cra-OW!”_

“Oh dear, Fish have gills but _Gil_ zean's got left behind with a whole pack of big bad wolves. .We don’t actually have to feed you every single day for this to work, you know. Or let you wear clothes. Or leave you outside of a teeny tiny crate during downtime. Things can allllllllways get worse. Done? Good. We’ve got a sort of team-building activity to do together, you and me. There’s going to be pain, then I’m going to tell you to do something, and when you do it, the pain will stop. And again, and again, until time’s up for now. The longer you don’t do it, the worse the pain gets. We’ll start with easy things.”

****

Leonara is waiting for Zsasz when he comes back up to the ground floor. She hands him a shopping list. “Since you’re going in town anyway. We’ve decided you should pick up some pizzas or something, too, because whatever the hell you did to our poor puppy, we don’t want to make him cook. And nobody else is in the mood to make something today, so unless you want to eat another one of Yoona’s jars of Doomsday Kimchi...”

Yoona’s grandparents were a Tae Kwon Do instructor and a hairdresser, respectively, who raised her since very young. They claimed they had successfully hidden from Japanese atrocities during World War II while living entirely on buried jars of homemade, generously fermented kimchi and hoarded sacks of rice. Their stories, and a few lean times when she was a kid, instilled in their American-born granddaughter a compulsion to cache kimchi in lots of little holes she digs herself, enough to confuse GCPD Forensics if they showed up and tried to find remains. Which they wouldn't, because that's just an unhygenic hassle. It’s practical, even charming as neuroses go. But they already ate a bunch last week when it was the puppy’s day off and everyone probably wants something more comforting. Okay, it’s comforting as hell for Yoona, but for the other seven of them it’s more exotic.

“Cool, no prob. Make sure Butch’s hypnotic tapes stay on loop but he doesn’t become fully conscious for the next three hours, please.” They have to embed a few reset words in case whoever ends up with sway over Butch becomes compromised or tries to use him for unsanctioned purposes. Butch won’t remember them, though. Only Zsasz and Leonara will know.

Leonara nods, sticks the list in Zsasz’s front pants pocket, and kisses him like she’s sinking into a warm bath. Only last week she scratched deep welts into his shoulder blades and bit his lower lip sore. When she pulls away, she says, “It’s been decided nobody’s gonna have sex the day of the funeral itself, by the way. Out of respect.”

“You pulling out of tonight, then?” He puts a hand on each side of her hips, resting them for a moment on the reality of her. She knew him before he was _the_ Victor Zsasz, when she helped him out of a jam and looked damn good doing it. Pure coincidence that he started working with Yoona while Leonara was still serving her eighteen-month sentence. When the day came, they picked her up right outside of the not-actually-black gate and asked her to come home with them. If she wanted. And she did. 

She scoffs. “I don’t think Jane would want me to go that far. We’ve got a time for tomorrow and the coffin’s been procured. We have a deal with the director of the cemetery Jane wanted that we can have that plot by then and a rush job on a headstone if we pay extra and dig the grave ourselves. Yoona says things move faster when Teeth silently looms nearby with a colander on his head and that we should try it more often. Everyone’s thinking of taking a turn digging - even the puppy, but really carefully - you in?”

“Aw damn, if only I had experience digging graves on short notice.” He presses his forehead to hers for a few seconds. “Yeah, I’m in. Keep me posted on everyone’s movements. I’ve got an igloo to find.”

“Penguins don’t live in igloos.”

Zsasz shrugs. “They should. They’d be warmer. Give the puppy a tiny spade or something. Move a bit of gravel and call it good.”

“What the fuck did you _do_?” Leonara glances back to the living room, where the puppy is ironing everyone’s nice funeral things that are currently wrinkly and talking over tomorrow’s charity mission with Kali. Ironing normally happens in the laundry room, which is actually in the normal basement, the buffer between the ground floor and the horror chamber. But the puppy is low on “spoons”, as the kids say, and Butch was a bit loud earlier.

“Everybody’s making me some kind of rogue supervillain,” Zsasz says, rolling his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trixie and Natty represent the duo in S3 who help Zsasz go after Gordon for killing Mario, to help reconcile that with my canon divergence in the Made to Measure series. I headcanon that Zsasz was actually on the fence about that whole business.


	3. Chapter 3

Penguin’s style reminds Zsasz of an androgynously goth teen accidentally transported to the Jazz Age and trying to blend in. Penguin’s mother looks like she’s escaped from a sepia reunion photo of retired flappers clinging to better days. If aesthetic is genetic, this means in order to produce their son’s style his dad - whoever and wherever he is - probably lives in a haunted mansion and has a whole drawer just for ascots. 

Gertrud Kapelput is a sweet woman. A bit daffy. He likes daffy in a person, though her naivete strikes him as dangerous. All it takes is knocking, introducing himself as Oswald’s work friend Victor, and telling her he’s checking up on him after a robbery at the club last night. That gets him not only entry but a comfy chair and some kind of reddish cordial drink thing foisted upon him. He won’t drink any unless she does. General policy. Though he is tempted by the butter cookies she’s placed in the middle of the coffee table.

“I’m in security,” he elaborates when the situation seems to require it. “The head of a group of security contractors. The club falls under my responsibility.”

She tsks and shakes her head as she takes a seat across from him. Everything is very...teacup in here, including everything that is not a teacup. He wonders if she embroidered the cushions herself. “Oswald said the club was closed for renovation, not that there was a robbery.”

“It’s also closed for renovations. I think he didn’t want you to worry. Where is he?”

“He is with a new tailor, a better one. He should be home soon. _Ach_ , so proud of his success! I am glad to meet a friend of his, too, he never has me meet his friends.” She looks Zsasz over and furrows her brow. “If you are ill, I have tea that you could try?”

“What makes you think I’m ill?” Zsasz isn’t offended, just curious. Then it clicks. Nobody’s asked in a long time. “Oh! Do you think I have cancer or something? No, it’s a harmless condition.”

“Oh, good! You are healthy, you simply do not grow...I know it is not shaving. A man might shave his head but not likely to shave eyebrows or eye…” She can’t quite remember the word and points at her own.

“Eyelashes. I used to grow some hair when I was a kid, but not evenly. As I got older the alopecia became more severe.” He shrugs.

She nods sagely. “I imagine other children, they were not kind to you, like they were not to my son. But you have grown successful and handsome like him.”

Kali’s in Zsasz’s head telling him how to smile rather than snort at this. Besides, Penguin isn’t _ugly_ , just really fucking exhaustingly needy, probably. “Living well is the best revenge,” Zsasz replies. Which he believes, but there are some very compelling runners-up. 

This launches Gertrud into a glorious anecdote about handing some girl who was mean to her in school over to an unspecified Eastern European secret police. Zsasz laughs and sees how it’s not necessarily (only) that Penguin’s a little overly attached to the woman he talks about to people he shouldn’t. One might want to have this woman around. 

Then a key turns in the lock and the front door opens. Penguin’s reaction to seeing Zsasz in his parlour is entertaining. He freezes and his pale eyes go wide. He tries not to sound nervous to the point of sounding uncharacteristically jovial. “Why Victor, what a surprise!”

“Just wanted to make sure you were doing alright after the _break-in_ at the club last night.” Zsasz says, getting to his feet. “Your mother’s been very welcoming. I wonder if I could talk business with you privately for a moment?”

“Business, business, only business, my hardworking boy,” Gertrud sighs, but does not object.

Penguin is all too eager to lead Victor to his own bedroom (but not like that). (Probably.) He locks the door behind him and glares. “If you’re planning on some kind of eye-for-an-eye, you’ve got another thought coming.”

Zsasz leans against the wall and cocks his head. “Huh?”

“You lost someone. Falcone needs me, so if you want payback you’d have to…” A muscle in Penguin’s jaw twitches as he trails off.

“What do you take me for? I don’t _work_ for _free_ , that’s what amateurs do. Jane requested that if she died saving a life then that person should be invited to her funeral.” Zsasz jerks his head towards the part of the wall dividing them from Gertrud. “Though you might consider getting your mom to be less trusting of strangers. Free tip.”

“Oh.” Penguin postures slightly less, though there’s always that element of sophisticated scrappiness to him. “When, where, and what would I need to do?”

“I’d fetch you at 4 PM. Keeping the location on the down-low beforehand, you see. Quick service then a bit of a wake. You’d bring flowers, listen respectfully, and make smalltalk. Eat the food, have a drink, though we’re not doing alcohol at the service. We’re going to get you sent home or other place of your choice, then _we’re_ going home and all getting drunk in a safe place. The way you dress normally is fine.”

Penguin considers this. “How many people?”

“A dozen maximum. Nobody hates you. There might be light ribbing because those are the sorts of people I hang out with.”

“I’ve never actually heard any of your henchwomen speak.”

“Don’t call the Zsaszettes that. It just works better if only one person talks during a mission except in emergencies. The banter started getting in the way.” 

“I suppose...the club won’t be open yet, after all…”

Zsasz snaps his fingers as a thought occurs to him. “Do you have dietary restrictions? Religious or health? We aren’t doing beef, pork, or dairy as it is.” Candy gets an annoying stomachache from dairy, which took her years to figure out. Ploy, on the other hand, vomits. It didn’t take her long to piece it together.

“No.” Penguin remembers himself and adds, “Thank you for asking. What kind of flowers?”

Zsasz thinks for a long time. “Literally anything but lilies. She hated clichés.” 

****

“Gay,” Yoona says tersely as she makes another strike with her spade. They’re only a few inches down right now, and they will likely need light to dig by shortly. 

Leonara moves so she won’t accidentally hit Yoona while doing very similar motions. “Gay. Cisgender, just fabulous.”

“Ace or demi,” Jesús contends as he transfers small mounds of soil into a wheelbarrow.

“You think everyone might be ace or demi until you see huge evidence to the contrary,” Candy says.

Leonara turns to address Zsasz. “Hey Vic. We’ve decided only Zsaszettes are going down into the hole. Eight people digging one grave is overkill. Teeth’s at home. On the off-chance Butch has a heart attack or there’s a rescue attempt someone should be there. Tomorrow we’re going to stagger it with help from guests so that nobody will miss the full funeral but the house will never be completely unattended.”

“I’m going to film the main part for anyone who misses a bit, and Amanita is going to help me edit it while she sleeps over,” the puppy adds, sounding excited. He sees Amanita as an almost mythic savior who is also very pretty.

“Good call. I stopped at home to drop off the groceries and took a peek at Butch, and Teeth is putting everything away,” Zsasz says. “Got the pizzas on the way here so they’re reasonably hot.”

“The men of the house can be pallbearers and then bury the coffin,” Kali says. She takes the stack of pizzas from Zsasz to where she and the puppy are setting up a folding table full of utensils and paper plates. “I’ve already done plenty for the body.”

“Nobody assumes ace or demi even when there’s huge evidence not to the contrary, so I’m balancing it out.” Jesús pouts. Actually pouts. Lower lip out. 

“Never knew you had such a chip on your shoulder.” The puppy is laying out paper cups, standing on better footing than this morning. “Would you say you’re totally ace or whether it’s more of a gray?”

“Given three weeks ago, I’d say it’s a gray, _mijo_.” Jesús winks. 

Candy’s wielding her spade like she plans on stabbing moles to death. “Gender non-conforming, demisexual, gay. I hung around listening to him talk to Sal a lot. I know him better than all of you.”

“Are we talking about who I think we’re talking about?” Zsasz asks, amused. 

Yoona shoots him a long-suffering look and nods. She looks rather attractive doing manual labor, like she’s from a propaganda poster for a more agrarian lifestyle. Buried kimchi for all. 

“Are we going to speculate about Penguin’s kink alignment too?” Candy continues, barely paying attention to what she’s doing. She learned how to dig graves and do other forms of basic cleanup when she was about ten. “Because I vote soft dom. Like tries to be harsh but gives in the moment the sub whimpers.”

“Pfft, where’s the fun in that?” Zsasz approaches the table and casually grasps the puppy’s wrists in his hands, like taking double pulses. The puppy just smiles, tired but okay. Zsasz kisses the back of his right hand. Quick peck, nothing swoon-worthy. If you keep a pet, you have to take care of it. 

Then he snags a slice of pizza from the top box and goes to wander around the gravestones. See if he recognizes any names carved in stone, if they correspond to any slashes carved in skin.

****

“When’s the last time we did purely sweet vanilla?” Leonara asks that night as he’s undoing her pants zipper and she’s undoing his shirt buttons. It would be more efficient if they undressed themselves, but sex that’s only about efficiency is like food that’s only about not dying of starvation.

“With each other? I dunno. Sometime last year? I do know I haven’t eaten you out in more than two weeks and I would like to fix that. If that’s okay an’all, not gonna demand it.”

She laughs, and once properly unclothed she lets him. 

Awhile later they end up doing honest-to-god/goddamn (according to your preference) missionary. Zsasz needs to restock on condoms soon. Kali helped Leonara find additional birth control options that suit her needs. This is about not dying of something boring.

She’s the only person other than him who can trace all his tally marks without looking. She’s one of very few people who’ve seen the single tally mark a cut above the rest, you might say, near his clavicle. She’s one of two who knows why.

Leonara is emotionally as well as physically sensitive anytime she comes more than twice in short succession. If something's bugging her and she wants to fall apart in a controlled way, she might ask to have it drawn out of her the way Zsasz sometimes wants things beaten out. This time she doesn’t cry afterwards, but she’s quiet and buries her face against his chest, and she is not as solid as usual. “Do you think I’m weak?” she asks at one point in a small voice.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” he replies, kissing above her left ear.

She puts the tip of one finger on that special mark, like it’s a button she’s not sure whether to press or not. Lets it linger.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The very last section has more direct self-harm (Zsasz-style, no new flavor) than previously. Summary of the section at the end if you prefer to skip that, or want to gauge.

Candy is the only one with any interest in the comically long cheese-less meatball sub Zsasz got at the pizza place as an alternative for her yesterday, and she’s eating the leftovers when he returns from his morning run. He doesn’t always time to do the rest of his workout routine, but it’s better than nothing.

“Yoona decided Pupster could use an opportunity to practice hand-to-hand when not at a hundred percent, since he won’t always have that luxury,” she says. The house they live in is actually a converted barn, and they use the original farmhouse for storage, a gym, and a sparring ring. A top assassin never gets complacent about skills, and it’s perfect for the puppies.

“Smart,” Zsasz says, taking a seat across from her. She nudges a glass of water at him, and he drinks half of it in one go.

“Kali confirmed with the trusted associate who agreed to babysit Butch at the last minute so we can all go to the full service and we can skip the videotaping. Annie Wu? You met her before? She'll be blindfolded on the way here. I don’t know what anyone else is doing. Have you all considered getting a big whiteboard or something? Anyway, uh, I have a favor to ask. Maybe just before you go pick up Penguin.” She looks tired. He hopes it’s mostly from playing Scrabble with the puppy while being catty about prominent Gothamites - or whatever it is they do together other than fucking and/or giggling - until late.

Zsasz nods. He reigns supreme when it comes to work matters, but Doc is equal to him in power domestically, and he trusts her judgment. Wu's built like a freight train and very loyal to her former employer. “Lemme shower and work on Butch a bit. I know Leo visited him already.”

“Not going to ask what it is?”

“Don’t care.”

****

“Hello, Butch! Looks like you’re all hooked up to the IV bag, so we can go right ahead to more obedience practice.”

_“Fuck...you…”_

“Nope. I’m not doing anything with you that everyone involved is supposed to enjoy. We hit a bit of a stalemate yesterday. I was impressed. Fortunately, this is going to be a longer session. Woohoo!”

****

Candy’s favor turns out to be help figuring out a new brand of waterproof mascara. “I’m not used to this kind of wand, plus I’m not built like the other girls. They said you were really capable with mascara, eyeliner, and eyebrow pencils on a Designated Male at Birth face, though they didn’t say why.”

Zsasz accompanies her to one of the bathrooms before explaining, “When I was younger, I was only partly bald. I would shave off what hair I had, for consistency, but rather than pluck what eyelashes and eyebrows I had, I learned ways to make it look like I had a full set. Those two met me while that was still going on.”

This is the most intimate he’s ever been with Candy in the short time she’s been one of them. She doesn’t twitch or blink when he needs her still and open-eyed. Her voice is less steady. “You know, when I met you and you had a gun to my head, there was a moment when all I thought - all I thought was _finally_. Finally, I wouldn’t be putting up with people treating me like shit day in and day out with no future except more of the same.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Zsasz replies. Applying only the mascara dissatisfies him, so he moves onto other makeup as well. “About what you said when you reported Mooney’s escape? I’m not a guy who second-guesses himself. No take-backsies. I’m no more likely to kill you than I am to kill anyone else who lives here.”

She grips the edge of the sink. “Why was it Jane and not me?”

He has to be delicate here, in more ways than one. “I don’t believe life has a lot of ‘why’ to it. You’ll have to talk to your priest about that. All I can say is that Jane being gone means we need you even more.”

After a long silence, she says, “You need to get dressed up before you go pick up Penguin, right? Since you’re going straight to the cemetery from there.”

“Uh huh.”

“Maybe I could shine your dress shoes real quick. They look all scruffy. I can put my dress on after you leave.”

Zsasz brushes a strand of hair away from her face. “Fine by me. Thanks.”

****

Penguin shows up with a multicolored bouquet of snapdragons. Zsasz reaches over when Penguin gets in the car and gives one a squeeze between his thumb and forefinger. The flower’s “mouth” opens. “Rawr!”

“Does that mean you like them?” Penguin asks, fastening his seatbelt. He’s put a purple snapdragon to his buttonhole, and is that a new umbrella he’s using for support? “They seemed rather fitting.”

Zsasz nods. Then his voice goes very soft. He keeps his gaze forward as he drives, but his true focus is clear. “Falcone wants you in one piece for the time being, but if you ever use our hospitality or anything you learn today against any of us...a man can suffer a whole lot while staying in one piece.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Penguin says. “You saved me from the woman who made me _need_ a cane.”

“First, I’d say that to any guest. Second, you’d betray absolutely anyone except your mother and maybe possibly someone you were in love with, if that’s your area. Which is cool by me in general, just affects how I handle you.”

Penguin is silent at that, so Zsasz switches on some music Jane liked. Her tastes ran towards solo indie chicks with guitars.

 _The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door_  
_He said, "I am not fighting for you any more.”_  
_The queen knew she'd seen his face someplace before_  
_And slowly she let him inside._  
_He said, "I've watched your palace up here on the hill_  
_And I've wondered who's the woman for whom we all kill_  
_But I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will_  
_Only first I am asking you why."_

“Have you had to do a lot of these?” Penguin asks a few songs in.

It’s a really pretty afternoon, Zsasz muses. A frolic through daisies afternoon. “Technically this is only the second. We held a vigil for Martin after his accident, even though he’d struck out on his own and isn’t really dead. The doctors say there’s still a chance he’ll wake up. Feel free to make a donation for his care when we pass the colander around later.”

“Colander?”

“Nobody else is going to be wearing anything like a hat, so...substitution.” Zsasz smiles. The new song is peppier than the last three.

“Are there any faux pas I should avoid while there?” Penguin asks, politely but not cowed. Zsasz admires that.

Zsasz considers. “There might be a lavender-haired person named Whisper who is neither male nor female and uses zie/zir/zirself pronouns. Go with it. Ploy’s lack of eye contact isn’t because she’s in a wheelchair, it’s cultural. Don’t try. There’s a nineteen-year-old we call ‘the puppy’ because that is the traditional nickname for our house apprentice. You call him whatever he prefers. If offered moonshine to sample, take a tiny sip to start off. For your own sake. Finally, don’t get in my way when I’m meeting and greeting.”

****

Ever since getting that bullet to the spine and switching to a more...sedentary career, Ploy hasn’t spent much time with Zsasz’s family, not even visits. It’s not that she doesn’t care about them anymore. She sends funny postcards and gives them a standing discount at her shop. It’s that her current work is legal, regardless of what her clients ends up doing with anything she fixes up for them, and she makes it known not to tell her anything you can’t handle her telling the police if pressed. She won’t volunteer info but won’t lie for you. It’s part of the deal she made with her brother before he agreed to move here and run the actual business side of her business, rather than her moving back to Bangkok for him to simply look after her.

She’s waiting for him on the edge of the parking lot when he and Penguin get there. Like Doc, she’s wearing white, in her case white slacks and a crisp white blouse with a light cream suit jacket over it, a white flower-shaped clip in her black bob-cut hair. Her fingerless gloves protecting her from the wheels she constantly pushes are black, though, and her Buddha pendant is silver. She used to leave it home during a job and apologize to it after. Her Doc Martens are gray faux snakeshin. She holds out her arms before Zsasz is even in range. He laughs. “Isn’t me picking you up and swinging you around patronizing or ableist or other stuff like that?”

“You did it when I could walk,” she counters, now making grabby hands. So he carefully but smoothly locks his arms under hers and lifts her out of her chair for a twirling hug. She’s a petite gal, and she’s barely older than Martin and Amanita, the puppies she overlapped with.

Penguin’s staring at them. Zsasz pays him no mind as he kisses Ploy’s cheek and sets her back down. However, Ploy takes a business card out of her pocket and offers it. “Mr. Cobblepot, I’ve heard about you. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Paramita Pramoj. Or you can call me Ploy.”

Taking the card, Penguin reads aloud, “ _Pramoj & Pramoj: Bladed Weapons and Small Arms Customization and Repair._ I’ve been to that part of the Narrows. Didn't notice you. I was pretty busy at the time, however.”

She starts turning around so she can wheel towards the service, but she keeps her eye on Penguin. “It’s underneath our cousin’s restaurant. Tiger Prawn. We just got a larger sign to help. If you want a personalized engravings, we’ve got special deals for bulk orders, and we’ve started doing more ergonomic handles and better balances for people with smaller hands and lower centers of gravity.”

“Want me to push you?” Zsasz asks cheerfully.

Ploy scoffs. “Vic, maybe I can’t kick your ass, but I can still punch your crotch.”

“I’ve missed you.” He walks beside her, checking now and then to make sure Penguin isn’t far behind.

Then there is Amanita along the way, who he’s missed even more since she moved out of state a few months ago. She is dressed a lot like Jane would have on a job, complete with almost exactly the same boots Jane was wearing that night, and Zsasz suddenly gets tight in his throat. Maybe he’s thirsty. The ex-puppy always worried about her hair getting grabbed in a fight so keeps it in a crew cut. Her already light brown skin has tanned from more fieldwork. The pale slash across one cheek she’s never explained is easy to see, suggesting she hasn’t tried to hide it with foundation and powder like she used to.

Amanita does not like touch and is sparing with words. He knows this is nurture, not nature, but not much else. Usually Zsasz wants his new hires to tell both him and Kali their baggage in case it comes up in a crisis, but after hearing Amanita’s background, Kali told Zsasz he didn’t need to know and that Amanita would feel better if he didn’t. She makes a heart with her cupped hands and he does it back. She waves at Penguin, who waves back. Otherwise she takes no notice of him, waving more enthusiastically at Ploy.

Ploy exclaims, loud from excitement, “Hey little one! I visited a Lao-American farming co-op yesterday because there’s a nearby Theravada Buddhist temple where I could make offerings for Jane, and I picked up some sugarcane juice for you. Remind me to give it to you later. How’s it going raising hell in Chicago?”

“It’s going okay?”

As the ladies went on ahead, catching up with similar enthusiasm but different proportion of words, Penguin asked, “Is it alright to say that I am intrigued by the sort of dinner table conversations that all of you must have?”

“That’s alright to say. Sex, death, and comedy, that’s what we’re into. Hot damn.”

“What?”

Zsasz points at a gravestone and rolls up a sleeve. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt under a vest rather than a suit jacket today. He points to one of the hatch marks, then to one of the gravestones. “There he is. I only remember because it’s a fresh one and the dates match.”

Then Whisper taps him on the shoulder. “You’re such a ghoul, Mr. Z… _mmph_.” Because Zsasz has dipped zir into a kiss. Tux plus black lipstick and the ever-present lavender hair is a good look.

“I’m going to keep doing that until you start calling me Victor,” Zsasz mock-scolds with Whisper still off-balance.

“Hi, Mr. Zsasz,” Whisper retorts with a grin.

“I need to go see the sisters before they take offense, but I’m not letting you off the hook.”

“I got an invite to stay over tonight, _Mr. Zsasz_. New puppy’s cute as hell, why haven’t you introduced us? You worried?”

Zsasz outright laughs. “I don’t worry about things. It’s your own fault for not visiting since Amanita found him. Did you get a nose piercing?”

“And a tongue stud.” Zie sticks it out to demonstrate.

“You minx. You know, he’s as slutty as you ever were.”

“That is unacceptable. I will have to have words with him. When we’re all drinking.” Whisper escapes the hold, grabs Penguin’s hand to shake in an absentminded sort of way, then heads for the open grave, where everyone else has gathered.

Zsasz catches Penguin’s dazed look. “What?”

“Nothing.”

David accosts Zsasz next, glasses smudged and looking like he slept in his suit. Which maybe he did. He’s got more gray hair than last time Zsasz saw him and talks a mile a minute. “I’m not dressed properly really, Victor, and I can only stay for half an hour before I meet with a client. I’d cancel but it’s the kind of meeting where if it goes well I’ve paid my next mortgage payment in one go and if it goes bad I lose my thumbs, you know?”

Zsasz shakes his hand and pats his back. “Just glad to see you. You lose your thumbs, give us a call and someone’ll lose either their head or their junk, your choice. Consider it a tip for last time you helped us out. Have you met Oswald Cobblepot? You might find each other interesting.”

Having fobbed Penguin off on someone, Zsasz escapes to Natty and Trixie, who are listening to Teeth’s explanation of Pastafarianism with barely restrained hilarity. He is sure to kiss each of their hands in turn. They’re not twins - well, not identical twins, he’s never asked if they’re fraternal - but they’re dressed in identical steampunk-ish lacy black gowns. “Madam and Madam, so glad you came.”

“You just want the booze we’ve got in our truck,” Natty says, smirking. They use an old family recipe going back to Prohibition, but far cleaner and safer than it would have been in the day. It is the only substance known to humanity that can make Yoona laugh at stupid puns or Amanita coo over pictures of cute animals.

“Which you can have as long as you promise to film the results of tonight and show us later,” Trixie adds.

“You could join us?”

“Got a job, sorry,” they chorus.

“Our current puppy’s not old enough to drink legally, we’ll use that as an excuse to make him be the sober cameraman. Shall we to the graveside?” Zsasz bows. They glide alongside him. They can be kinda creepy, sure, but they’re his kinda creepy.

That could be said of everyone here, really.

****

Jane hasn’t been dead long enough to get gross yet on cursory inspection, and Dock kept her chilled and did a bit of draining and so on. They all take a peek at her.

“I put makeup on her, made her look less ghostly,” Leonara says quietly as she takes Zsasz’s hand. He squeezes it. He'll have to compliment her on this black strapless number she found from who knows where.

Yoona dug out a white hanbok from the back of her closet, and Doc is in a white sari. They’re holding hands as well. Yoona is often not very demonstrative when it comes to romantic love when others can see them. It’s not out of fear, just out of her default reserve. Right now she’s got such a strong grip obviously going on, Zsasz hopes Doc is into having her hand slightly crushed. Candy’s flanked by the puppy and Jesús. She looks calmer than earlier. Her tea-length black dress with a slight flare to the skirt is adorable and her eye makeup, is, of course, fantastic. Teeth has the colander on his head and is standing like he’s from a bizarro Buckingham Palace.

The guests find their slots among or just behind. Zsasz clears his throat. “Thank you all for joining us. We’re gonna keep this part brief. Everyone who’s already done something according to personal religious beliefs, thank you. Everyone who hasn’t, it’d be nice if you said something about Jane right now. Maybe a story about you and her, or your impression of her, or something you wish you could say to her. The religious people can too, I’m just saying you’re off the hook. I’ll go last.”

It goes round, and some of the stories are funny and some of them make people cry. There are a few second helpings, storytellers remembering something, and there are people interrupting to add or correct.

Then it’s Zsasz. “Whisper, Amanita, and Nefyn stand by me. Everyone give us some room.”

“Who’s Nefyn?” Whisper asks. The current puppy points at himself, and Whisper claps zir hands over zir mouth in embarrassment.

“It’s okay,” Nefyn (best to think of him that way until the puppy pileup ends) says, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

When everyone’s in place, Zsasz starts undoing his tie. “Don’t worry, this isn’t a striptease.”

There’s a combination of chuckling and overly exaggerated expressions of relief or disappointment.

“I don’t have any religious beliefs or rituals. But all of you know I have a ritual that’s very important to me. Here, Whisper, hold this.” He takes off his tie and hands it to zir.

Then he starts on his vest buttons. “There are rules. Not all of you know the rules. They have to be confirmed dead. I can’t have killed them just so I can add to the count. Most importantly, it has to be because of me. Amanita, please.” She takes the vest like it might break if dropped.

Shirt. More thoughtfully. “Not all of you know about Chloe. She was our first puppy. Usually puppies recruit the next one before they can graduate, but Chloe did not recruit Whisper. That’s because, after less than two months of being with us, she came with us on a mission. A simple mission, I thought. A good training mission. It wasn’t. She died a few minutes in, from something she would have been able to avoid if she hadn’t been such a rookie.”

A sudden sob. From _Yoona._ She saw the moment twenty-year-old Chloe fell. Leonara found out after the fact. No one else here ever met Chloe.

“Nefyn, if you would.” Zsasz folds it first. Nefyn hugs it to his chest. Zsasz is wearing a sleeveless gray undershirt underneath. He points to the one tally mark set apart from the rest. Almost on his shoulder, right where if, say, a parrot perched on him its feet would cover it. “It was my call. Yoona even expressed reservations. But Chloe wanted to go, and Leonara had way too much respect for me back then. It was my call. I killed Chloe. That’s why she’s here.”

Then he takes an Exacto knife out of his pocket. Clicks the blade out.

Everyone is silent.

To pacify Doc, he makes a show of taking a sterilizing wipe out of another pocket, removes it from the packet, and wipes the blade clean. “I have a few beliefs. There’s only one I’d say is as important to me as faith is to some of you. It’s that when I bring someone into my team. My life. My home. I am responsible for you. I was responsible for Jane. I loved her, and I killed her just as much as anyone else did.”

He find’s Chloe’s mark with his fingers first. He needs them to keep each other company, close by, in parallel. Yoona is crying and crying and crying. Doc and Leonara have got her now, though, and he needs to get Jane.

Tip. Edge. Bite. Blood. Forever.

“It’s a deeper cut, you see, so they won’t fade for sure. Not as long as I have skin to keep them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of squicky part: after others have shared stories/thoughts about Jane, Zsasz relates the story of the first ever puppy, Chloe, whose death he blames his own poor leadership for. He shows that he has a tally mark for her, set apart from his regular ones. Then he takes off some of his clothes (he's still wearing an undershirt and fully dressed below the waist) and cuts a new one for Jane right next to it.
> 
> This takes some inspiration from [An Actor Drops the Act About Having Hair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLeb4gmpKSI), a wise and very genuine interview with Zsasz's actor about how his alopecia has affected his life and career. Over the course of it, he removes articles of clothing until eventually he's just in his underpants, revealing his complete lack of hair and showing his peace with it now. It made me fall in platonic love with Anthony Carrigan.
> 
> The song quoted is ["The Queen and the Soldier"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyZI-VaVg2g) by Suzanne Vega.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the second section, there is a reference to fake threats of sexual assault for testing/training purposes.

After the wake in the rented hall attached to the cemetery, Doc asks to accompany Zsasz driving Penguin back to the neutral location where Zsasz picked him up. She asks Penguin to sit in back with her so she can demonstrate some leg massages that Penguin can do on himself to help with the pain. She also gives him advice on how to avoid exacerbating it.

“I appreciate the free consultation, but why?” Penguin asks.

“Doc’s got a compulsion to heal everyone within a few hundred feet, no matter who they are or what they’ve done. It’s why we can’t take her with us when we’re working. Awkwarrrrd.” Zsasz isn’t exaggerating much. Before moving into his place, her practice sometimes had tense encounters between rival gang members waiting to be seen. Including for injuries they had literally given each other earlier that day.

She kicks the back of his seat. “So help me, Victor, next time you ask me to patch up someone you’ve tortured too enthusiastically and want to last longer, I’ll just give them one of the easiest, gentlest deaths possible.”

Shit. She’s not exaggerating at all. “Has anyone ever told you how badass and superhumanly capable and longsuffering Doctor Lahiri is? I certainly don’t say it often enough.”

Doc snorts. “I suppose an unscheduled mercy kill would inconvenience the ladies, too. Anyway, Oswald, I’m also spiting the woman who hurt that leg in the first place.”

“Fish is still at large, then,” Penguin mutters.

Zsasz doesn’t flip off the driver who’s stopped way too close to their car at this red light, and nearly cut them off earlier besides. He rolls down his window and leans out with a broad smile, making a ‘pew pew’ gesture with his left hand. The driver’s mouth falls open and he floors it, earning himself a ticket, many honks, and two near-collisions.

“Jane would be howling with laughter,” Doc says wistfully.

“She would be.” Zsasz rolls the window back up. “Our main potential informant has no idea where she would go other than ‘away from Gotham’. I quadruple-checked. Teeth and Jesús were less involved in funeral prep so they asked around a bit. Whisper took a crack at it, too. No go.”

Penguin clears his throat. “That wasn’t meant as a criticism. I’m very grateful.”

**** 

After Penguin leaves, Doc moves up to sit in the front seat. “Your demonstration at the funeral was very touching.”

“Are you going to tell me not to do something like that again?” 

“No. The depth to which you care about the Zsaszettes and apprentices is the one thing that keeps me from worrying about you every moment of the day.” She rubs her temples like she has a headache.

“You make it sound like you don’t think I care about you just as much.”

There’s a long silence that turns into odd little sounds. Zsasz turns his head to see that Doc is crying quietly. He’s not sure what to do when Doc, the one who looks after all of them, is the one crying. He hands her his pocket square from his vest to use as a hankie and tries to keep what she taught him is called a ‘listening silence’.

Eventually she blows her nose and says, “I had a mentor in med school who told me it was okay to cry, that it’s a precious thing if you can both care and keep going, but to cry after. Cry after they are either in a bed or dead. When there is nothing you could possibly do for them, at least for now. Then cry. Then it is your time to be human.”

“Go on, then.”

She does for awhile. When she’s calmer, she says, “We should delay Nefyn’s staged abduction to one month from now, not two weeks. It’ll skew results if he’s still grieving as much as he is. Also, don’t make pretty much his entire body except for his head and hands look like a sunset again between then and now.”

“Fair enough.” The other puppies after Chloe went through a staged abduction, too, but are sworn to secrecy. It has to be a surprise for full effect, but it will happen only once, so that Nefyn never mistakes a real capture for a training exercise for the rest of his apprenticeship. In normal interrogation resistance training, personal triggers aren’t always avoided but everyone is careful with them. However, Nefyn should face his demons at least once without actually being in danger. His contract provides consent to be temporarily misled for the duration of an exercise and to be placed in intentionally distressing situations. Someday he might meet a pro at using people’s fears against them. 

Doc will stand by and use her experience working with traumatized people to know if they absolutely must stop. “Have you figured out yet how to get around him knowing your touch too well? Being blindfolded won’t fool him in that respect. That wasn’t a problem with Amanita.” 

Hurting his puppies against their will isn’t fun at all, other than the satisfaction of being proud of them when they come out the other side. The worst so far has been holding Amanita down and manhandling her just short of sexually. He made her think he was going to. This is simulated danger, psychological, not like the usual training where it’s real but straightforward pain.

“Candy’s agreed to be Scary Cesar, the persona she used to intimidate people for Salvatore,” Zsasz says. It’s dark now, and has started to rain. He turns on the windshield wipers. “They’re so different it pretty much counts as another person. It’ll be hard for her, but she had similar experiences in her own training and in the long run she feels like she benefited. Though it’s not normal for one’s own parents to hire actors that sort of thing, right?”

“Biological families that are part of Mob families are weird,” Doc says. 

“That’s his secondary trigger. Have you come up with a way to safely fake the other one?” Zsasz does not want to add to the boy’s scars.

“Yes. Someone lights a cigarette, audible click of a lighter and everything, and someone else has pieces of raw meat and a hot plate. Right when the meat gets slapped on the hot surface and sizzles, a piece of dry ice gets briefly pressed to his skin. It won’t be perfect, but he’ll be too panicky to notice. A few seconds of dry ice contact can be treated easily with no long-term damage.” She takes a deep breath and leans against the car door. “I need a drink.”

**** 

“Hello, Butch. Because of someone needing to be able to work on and check on you, I don’t get to drink tonight. You are why I might have nice things but can’t keep them. Just FYI. As compensation, though, I brought out this doohickey. Have you ever seen so many moving parts?”

****

The party ended up being in the upstairs TV room. Zsasz takes in the sight before him after a quick change into loungewear. Yoona and Doc have made a structurally sound pillow fort on the floor with a partial roof and are snuggling in their own cushioned world. Some colorful and inoffensive dance competition is on in the background, which Teeth and Jesús in different armchairs appear to have formed a drinking game around. The low table between them has a pair of shot glasses and a small jug for refilling them.

Whisper on the couch has Nefyn sitting sideways in zir lap and appears to be feeding him sips of a clear carbonated drink through a crazy straw. Nefyn’s got his arms around zir neck and is generally being a koala.

“He started talking about how much he loves knives and his mom, in that order, which I was told is the signal for making him switch to soda water and lime juice,” Whisper explains.

Candy’s got Nefyn’s feet in her lap and seems to be irregularly tickling them. “As you were saying, puppy, what’d she do when she found you playing with all the kitchen knives while sitting on the linoleum?”

“She said, ‘No, no honey, that’s not how you grip a cleaver. Let me show you.’” Nefyn squirms at a tickle but Whisper holds him in place for a continued assault. “And...and...hee...she taught me how to play darts, and when I got really good at darts we switched to...eek!”

“How old were you?” Amanita asks from the rocking chair she’s always commandeered since she first moved in two and a half years ago. She’s swaddled herself in a microfiber throw with only one hand free to hold a strange glimmering cocktail garnished with a rosemary sprig. 

“Six. I miss her so much.”

“When did she die?” Whisper asks, taking a sip of zir own drink. Straight moonshine on ice. 

“When I was seven. All the women who teach me the coolest knife tricks die too young...” Nefyn starts tearing up and Whisper has to kiss him to make him stop. Zie’s always been quick to read others.

Leonara, meanwhile, is curled up in a ball on the loveseat. Her booze glass is drained but she has one mostly full of water next to it. “Need you, Vic.”

And so Victor goes, setting his ginger ale next to her empty glass. She sighs and puts her head on his thigh. He makes sure it’s well situated, then takes out his camera and films a few choice moments, to keep his promise to the sisters. “What are the rules of your game?” he asks the boarders.

“Every time the guy picks up the girl, take a shot,” Teeth says just before taking one.

Jesús drawls, “It’s not an advanced game. I think we may go blind in the morning.”

“What if being the third Zsaszette is, like, like, cursed?” Whisper asks the room. 

“We talked about you being this dark,” Yoona’s voice comes from inside the fort.

Amanita frowns. “Ploy and Jane’s not a big sample size.”

Whisper starts playing with Nefyn’s hair. “But there aren’t that many Zsaszettes total. Ever have been. Two out of….” Zie counts on zir fingers. “Yoona, Leonara, Ploy, Jane, Candy. Five. Seriously. Yeesh.”

“The third Zsaszette is not cursed,” Doc says in an extremely maternal voice.

Whisper is clearly fixated on this idea. “But like being a redshirt.”

“Or being the drummer in Spinal Tap,” Teeth says, without looking away from the TV.

“Or being a Night Vale Community Radio Intern?” Nefyn ventures. Everyone stares at him and he goes back to koala-ing. 

“Defense Against the Dark Arts Teacher,” Jesús says, prompting several ooohs. This sparks off a conversation between him (the irresponsible uncle figure) and the puppies that goes mostly over Zsasz’s head, involving Hogwarts houses. Zsasz stabbed some people in a theater showing _The Prisoner of Azkaban_ once, and he's aware that Harry's aunt and uncle treat him like shit because of jokes Nefyn's made. That’s all he knows. The flying horsie thing he noticed onscreen as he slipped out was neat.

“Honey badger don’t care,” Nefyn says decisively at one point, which makes Amanita nearly spit out her drink. Kids these days. 

Then after some pleasant minutes of banter, Whisper says, “I think Jane would have been a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin...”

Leonara growls, “We’re going to talk about something else right the hell now.”

“The third Zsaszette is _not cursed_ ,” Yoona chimes in, dangerously. 

Candy smiles with exaggerated cheer. “At least I hope not.”

“Sorry,” Whisper whispers. Heh.

“Ahem.” Candy lifts her cocktail, also with a sprig of rosemary. “Amanita made me this when I told her I don’t like straight-up liquor. Won’t tell me what’s in it but it’s delicious. It’s a Moonlit Howl.”

“Every mixologist has to think of good names for their creations,” Amanita says. She and Candy mime clinking glasses from across the room.

“Did I ever tell you about when Sal got, like, eight men killed because he has a poor understanding of military time?” Candy slaps her own thigh while giggling up a storm. She has, but it’s a good story. Whisper laughs a lot while she tells it.

Nefyn eventually escapes from his cozy tormentors for a pee, and on his return presents several people with water and Amanita with a calendar of cute animals. She coos and squees in a way that makes her actually sound her age rather than like a cynical veteran of multiple wars. 

“Jane isn’t here,” Leonara whispers, even as she watches and listens. 

Zsasz gathers her into his arms. “I know, darlin’, I know. Look who is.”

****

When Zsasz wakes, everyone besides Teeth has gravitated towards what was originally a pillow fort. Now it’s a pillow nest, all the cushioned furniture except the loveseat plundered for its sake. The sisters could seriously quit their day jobs and sell their recipe to Wayne Enterprises. He’s never seen anything else have these effects. Only Teeth had to run to vomit, and that’s because he got greedy and started counting tiny lifts during spins as “picking up”.

A lot of blankets have been dug out of the closet, or possibly stripped from beds, and most are being shared. Amanita is a self-contained burrito, though, to avoid skin contact. She’s safely bracketed by Doc and Yoona, the ones she trusts most. She thinks of them as her moms. 

Nefyn is trying to cuddle Whisper, Candy, and Leonara at the same time in his sleep. Candy’s unconscious self is trying to claim Nefyn exclusively as her own, and Leonara’s got one hand clutching to the lower hem of Yoona’s soft red tank top peeking out from under a fluffy comforter. Whisper looks like zie fell flat on zir face and decided to stay there.

Jesús is under the same blanket as Candy, back to back with her and snoring like he’s got a hamster lodged in his sinuses. Hey, no judgment. It’s not a surprise. Zsasz fucked him once on invitation, because Jesús is on an ongoing quest to find out if there is any type of sex he likes more than tinkering with cars. So far, no. Jesús conked out immediately afterwards.

Turns out mysteriously-shirtless Teeth is sprawled across the threshold of the open doorway, as if he plans on tripping intruders. Zsasz appreciates the thought. 

Zsasz takes a picture of the gathering of all that keeps him sane in the slightest. This picture is only for him, and he needs to keep it locked up tight because this greatest strength is also his most potent weakness. He thinks about touching them, but they look tired, and several of them have potentially injurious reflexes towards anyone who wakes them suddenly. That can wait.

Instead he steps over Teeth (nice thought, buddy, but you suck at this) and heads downstairs to check on Butch. His phone rings in the pocket of his sweatpants.

“Will you be ready for active duty tomorrow?” Falcone asks without preamble. “I need to make plans.”

Today will be their day of rest and recovery, from hangovers and otherwise, and the Zsaszettes and Doc will likely want quiet solitude. This could be a good puppy appreciation day. Zsasz might find an hour to play with Whisper for old times’ sake. Maybe he could watch Whisper gently play with Nefyn, since there’s chemistry between them and Whisper’s a switch. Maybe Zsasz will be the one to drive Amanita to the train station this evening and catch up more. Maybe there will be time to dig up another one of Yoona’s kimchi jars before she goes and make her carry it back to Chicago, plus a box of the mint fudge brownies Nefyn’s way too good at and froze a batch of for later. Maybe he’ll make her make him a Moonlit Howl. Not enough to get him drunk, just enough to taste her ingenuity. Maybe he could take all three to visit Martin.

But that is today. Tomorrow is coming soon, and he needs to answer. Zsasz touches the newest cut, slipping his fingers under his navy blue tee. No black at home. Jane’s mark itches, but is healing. 

“I’ll be ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Would love to hear what you think. <3
> 
> Original novel plug: [ Available in ebook and print form on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DSLT3D2/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1529183871&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Donaya+Haymond&dpPl=1&dpID=51cFXjiasBL&ref=plSrch), and in [print from the Barnes & Noble site.](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seasons-turning-donaya-haymond/1129067787?ean=9780999202654)


End file.
